Last Minutes of Time
by Still Bullet
Summary: There was only one thing they all called out for: Hope. But in a situation like this, how were they going to escape? One-Shot


_I don't know why titles are always the hardest part of writing a story. Damn._

_Well, I uhh...wow. It felt really weird to write this story. This combines elements of stuff I've never done before--it ended up sounding like how freakin' odd my dreams are. I don't know where I pulled this out._

_I've been wanting to write something like this for a while, and I finally pushed myself to doing it. I had a hard time getting inspired, so I read a few fictions here and watched some cut scenes, and tried to pull out at least a sentance, and managed to go in an auto-pilot like stage, which is how half my stories are written. Over all, I didn't think it came out too shabby--a bit on the fast-paced side, but not so bad. 2,100 words, which is pretty big for me these days (I don't know why all my recent stories are short)._

_I don't want to talk about the story itself, as this is a very "hush hush" kind of thing. I want you guys surprised. I will tell you, however, that there are some very, VERY slight spoilers for Episode Two, but it doesn't effect the story in the game at all, it's just an attack from one of the enemies you'd see._

**_Based On: Well, I don't know. I can't figure out when or where this is supposed to take place. Post-Episode Two, maybe?  
In that case, Half-Life 2: Episode Two (Valve)  
Rating: That I'm not sure about, either. A little too mature for K+ but not enough for T. So, I guess K+ for blood and people crying. And slightly disturbing images (and by slightly, I mean like only a few sentances, so it's not that bad.)  
Author's Notes: What do you get when you toss a random idea with random characters into a random place at a random time? This! Can't say much until the end, so go ahead and get reading!  
By the way, I used language that might be offensive ("god damn" again), so I appologize for that._**

--

"Gordon! Gordon, please!"

There seemed to be a pulse within his mind, surging pain and obscuring his vision of the darkness with a bright red light. Each pulse created a migraine that continuously pounded against his thoughts, making it harder and harder to concentrate on life.

"Hey, buddy, get the hell up!"

The two voices seemed to be screaming their entire soul towards them. He could hardly hear it, though. Other sounds covered the cries of the two unknown beings—screeches, inhuman screeches. A hiss snapped out from in front of him, as the moans of something struggling, or perhaps even suffering, continuously looped.

"Gordon! Oh god, Gordon, please! Please wake up!" A female seemed to be shouting his name; her cries appeared to be corrupted by the frequent cracking of her voice. She constantly seemed to be breathing deeply, taking each breath hard enough to force oxygen into her vocal cords and having a loud whimper of lost hope pour out from her throat. It sounded as though she was perhaps bawling.

"God damn it, Gordon, if you're dead, then we're all doomed!" Now it was a male screaming his name. His vocal cords did not leak an angered expression into his cries, but it seemed more of a shout from desperation. A shout for any hope.

The being shook his body ever so slightly, only to find that he could only make a basic twitch of his limbs. But that did not appear to be his fault, however; what seemed like some kind of force prevented his body from making the slightest movements. He couldn't feel any presence of a reason to this force, but then again his suit limited his sense of touch, other than to his head, which was currently the only part of his flesh being exposed.

His eyes seemed to snap open once the pulsating flashes had taken a moment's pause.

"Oh, Gordon! Oh thank god!" The female seemed to be very enlightened by such a small action from the scientist, yet he could still hear her tears roll down her cheeks as she continuously let out cries. Gordon could finally make out what was ahead of him, which only shocked his brain as much as those pulses had.

"Well, thank god!" snapped a semi-sarcastic voice to the right of him. "Gordon, now would be a good time to get us the hell out of this mess!"

The piercing pair of green eyes hastily scanned the current situation. The owners to the pair of the mysterious voices were quickly classified as close friends Alyx Vance and Barney Calhoun by the hero's memories, struggling with the same amount of failure that he had. All of them appeared to be floating, a faint green-hued light swirling around each body. Alyx was to the left of Gordon; her face looked as red as the dried blood of her scars, her cheeks covered with salty tear-trails. Her eyes were squinted and blurry, and they also appeared to be bloodshot. She let out a gasp as she continued to cry, her tears skidding off of her fine face and splashing onto the concrete below.

Barney was to the opposite side of Alyx, his reaction completely different. He actually appeared to be quite angered, as his eyebrows were narrowed and a large frown displayed his grinding jaws of yellowing teeth. Each time he talked, he seemed to bark his words, small blobs of saliva shooting out of his mouth. While he appeared to be fearless, Gordon could still tell that a sliver of a cold tingle had passed through Barney's spine.

Directly in front of the clueless scientist was a creature that made Gordon attempt to recoil and reach for the nearest items he could possible defend himself with. The body of the creature was limbless; in fact, it appeared to be hardly organic. Its body was long, resembling a large slug-like creature with its skin. The body was a dark gray, and towards the front of the creature its skin color had switched to a white-like hue. A large black ring circled around where the two colors clashed. In the middle of the "face" of the creature was some sort of mouth or nose-like organ, with what seemed like two wires hanging out from it, parallel to each other, and connecting to its lower stomach. Two black rings circled around the middle and end segments of the slug-like creature. A two lens object was imbedded at the right side of the creature's face, seeming to function as an eye. Some sort of device was mounted on the back of the creature, with two arm-like prosthetics reaching out from either side.

The creature itself was an Advisor—a vital member of the Combine. A ruler, they appeared to be, with highly evolved minds and the ultimate technology. Its telekinesis held the trio hostage, examining them with its blue "eyes" as it floated in front of them. Despite the little hope that they had, Alyx and Barney continued to struggle, trying to find any way to breach through the strong grasp of the Advisor.

The two were still continuously begging for Gordon's help. Get them out of here, save them all, kill the Advisor. Gordon wished he could do that. Green eyes frantically scanned the area for any sort of defense mechanism, any way at all to save himself and his friends.

He couldn't even tell where he _was_. His mind was so hazy that he could hardly even concentrate on the surrounding environment. Every time he tried to shift his vision toward the ground, another pulse shot through his mind. Judging by the others' reaction, they were suffering the same pain. Gordon attempted to reach towards his back and grab any sort of weapon his fingers could wrap around—it wouldn't even matter if the weapon in question was useless to him. He could feel his muscles tighten as he tried desperately to push through the telekinetic force. He found himself to be unlucky, and he could hear Barney sharing the frustration of a lack of escape.

The Advisor soon switched its vision towards the old security guard, examining him carefully. Its eyes scanned up and down his body as Barney's appearance seemed to confuse it.

"And what the hell are _you _looking at?" Barney spat at the Advisor, squirming his body as he seemed to have an urge to kick the creature in front of them. The Advisor let out a curious screech, as Barney was slowly brought closer to the Combine leader.

"Get away from him!" Alyx screamed through her tears, attempting to lift her arm and reach out towards the man she felt was an uncle to her, only to end in failure. The Advisor quickly glanced at her, as the struggling Barney was gripped between the two claws of the Advisor's arms. Barney screamed for his release, but the Advisor simply ignored him, as it brought his head in front of the mouth-like organ.

The other two saw what was coming. But Barney didn't.

Alyx let out a shriek loud enough to make Gordon go half-deaf for a moment. The two watched helplessly as Barney's eyes suddenly widened, his dark green irises fading as blood spurted from the back of his skull. The Advisor penetrated it with its tongue-like organ, and the two watched as blood from Barney's head entered the tube-like tongue and into the Advisor. Gordon thought he could feel a tear beginning to form in his eyes, as well. He wasn't nearly in the same condition as Alyx was, but seeing his close friend suffer a sudden death right before his eyes…

"Let go of him, god damn it!" Alyx screamed, the tears disappearing from her eyes. It seemed as though she had basically "cried herself out". "Leave us alone!" The Advisor's tongue recoiled back into its body, as it let its grip of the corpse loose. The body crashed with the ground, creating a pool of blood to slip out from the newly formed wound onto the hard floor. Alyx was then brought closer to the Advisor, which only made her squirm and scream for help even more.

"Gordon! Oh my god, Gordon!" she continuously shouted, as the Advisor had brought the young woman's body closer towards its mouth.

"Gordon, I know I am going to die!"

Neither of them wanted to hear those words. But both of them knew they were true.

Gordon bit his bottom lip as he watched his partner get closer to her doom. He didn't want this to happen. But he couldn't stop it.

"Before I do," Alyx quickly shouted, as she took a deep gasp to refill her lungs. "I want you to know, I lo—"

Gordon could feel his heart snap to pieces as raining blood cut the rebel short. The Advisor seemed to fool around with its tongue inside the woman's skull before blood began to approach its body through the tube. Gordon couldn't deny it now—he was definitely crying. Salt-filled tears crept into his mouth as he watched the Advisor toss down the corpse, just as carelessly as it had with Barney.

Gordon watched in horror as he felt himself drift closer towards the Advisor. The two lenses of its eyes quickly scanned "The One Free Man" before it.

He wanted to scream, he wanted to kill, he wanted to get out of that place. He didn't know how such an event was possible. How did this all happen? How _could _it have happened?

A sharp, cold tingle crept up his spine, as time appeared to be at a stand-still for a moment.

"My my, _Doctor Freeman_, what a messss we have _here_."

Gordon watched as the color of the world seemed to fade into gray, his vision appearing gritty as he could feel life being drained from his veins. He tried looking around for the source of the voice, but found himself without luck. He already knew who the source was. He just didn't know _where _it was.

"I must say, I am rather…dissss-a-_poin-_ted with the outcome of this all."

Some sort of noise entered the lone man's ear drums, as though something was arriving from another world. A pale-skinned man lowered from practically nowhere in front of Gordon, towards the left of the Advisor. His unnaturally colored green eyes seemed to be the only color within the world at the moment. Just glancing at them made Gordon feel sick to his stomach. The man held a briefcase tightly with one hand—he used his other free hand to quickly straighten his color-faded purple tie.

"Well, Doctor Freeman, I was hoping that you would have been able to _handle_ thisss." He dragged on his words like a hiss of a snake. "But, I guess my…ex-_pec-ta-tions_ were too much." He took a quick, ghastly breath of air, as he slowly walked behind the helpless doctor.

"I'm sure you know how…" He quickly gasped before continuing, "…vital young Alyx was to the Resistance, _as _with Misss-_ter_ Calhoun." He appeared to the right of Gordon now, stopping to take a moment to look down upon the corpses below them. A shake of his head continued his speech, as he let out a, "Tisk-tisk".

"I thought that this would-_n't _have been a _chal-lenge_ for you, but I guessss…I was _wrong_." He quickly flicked off a piece of dust from his faded-blue suit with his free hand.

"Well," he continued, taking another one of his ghastly breaths of air. "I guess…I do not _need _you out here any longer. You have lost nearly _all _you hold…dear, but…I'm _sure _that you will for-_get _about all this over _time_." The man quickly cracked a smirk."Maybe your skills will be needed…again…in the _future_."

Gordon watched as the sight before him soon began to slip away, as though he was being pulled away from life itself.

"Until then, I hope you will have a niccce…_rest_."

A doorway of what seemed to be pure light opened in front of Gordon's vision. He watched as the suited man gave him a quick smirk, before he spun around and walked towards the doorway. As soon as he had entered, the doorway of light closed, leaving Gordon in the empty darkness, as he felt his body beginning to go numb.

_--_

_And that's the end!_

_Like I said, I had no idea what I was going for here. I just wanted to try out a story of killing off Alyx and Barney (my two favorite characters? What's wrong with me!) I didn't give much thought about where it was or how it happened in the first place, or when it was supposed to take place (or how Barney got there if it's post-Ep. Two), but that would take away the whole "mysterious charm" this thing has if I tried thinking of a reason. Plus it would sound like crap, because I would have to dump all the reasons out in a couple paragraphs. So, I'll leave you to wonder._

_Writing something as emotional as this was very...odd. I've only killed off a character once (actually, I did it twice--but both of them could hardly count as a death, so they're more like half-deaths, which create a full death when combined...wait, what?), so this was a new field with me. As with the G-Man--originally, Gordon was supposed to die like the rest, but I thought it would have went nice with G-Man. I've been wanting to use him in a story for a long time now, anyway. There was another idea I wanted to try out here, but explaining it would make this story about a thousand words longer than it already is._

_So, don't ask me what the hell this was supposed to be. 'Cause I don't know. Thanks for reading this damn-weird story, anyway! Be sure to check out the latest addition to "Echoes of a Resonance Cascade" if you haven't already--it's called "Junk Monkey"._

_THERE MATT, I WROTE IT, AND IT KILLED ME ON THE INSIDE. FREAKIN' WAH._

_**EDIT: **Nearly 100 pageviews already and not a single review? Come on, guys! No need to be shy! XD;; I would love opinions on this!_


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